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Topic: Hands free option (Read 3593 times)

I figured I'd make a post here. This doesn't really bother me personally but I've heard it brought up quite a few times over the past month. It came up in a thread post today as well so I figured that was a good point for me to post and ask

What was the reasoning behind removing the ability for people to use hands-free versus push to talk?

It has been my experience (30 years as a HAM radio operator and about 10 years hosting voice servers for gaming communities), that a percentage of users will invariably have some sort of background noise (even breathing) or situation that will cause them to transmit randomly and intermittently. People find it annoying and distracting, myself included.I don't want to hear their mom or wife yelling at them, kids in the background etc...I know this isn't everyone but it always happen if left up to the users.

Getting used to PTT is not that hard and once you do it becomes second nature. It provides a more agreeable environment for everyone.

We can make VOX mode available for select individuals if it becomes necessary. Raid Leaders for instance. I could create a group for channel admins to enable it per user in their channel... we already have a similar setup for continuous transmit option.

Thanks for the quick reply. Just a side comment I suppose, since obviously your server=your rules...

Isn't that issue of people with background noise just something that players in the channel have to handle on a case by case basis? I mean, as an example, there's a guy that comes in channel that likes to broadcast us through his speakers and it quite often causes people to echo if, for some reason, 2 people try to talk at once. It is obnoxious but easily remedied when we tell him to stop or leave the channel. I would imagine there is nothing you can do to prevent that type of thing and that sometimes you just have to trust the users to be able to communicate with the people in the channel when something isn't right.

Anyway, thanks again for the response. Since someone mentioned on AO forums that it was a factor in causing people to not use AOSpeak (and I've been asked the question) I figured I'd ask and get an official response.

would it be possible to make it grantable option so a channel admin could give it out to there channel only.

I know ive not been about much over the last 8 - 10 weeks due to RL but when i do get to log on i'm seeing less and less people on TS. Some of my friends have started using another TS because when there doing PVP (and some farm raids) they dont have time to hit PTT as there hitting there other keys on the keyboard for perks, some find it hard to communicate as fast as they would like too.

I even tried persuading them to come back as in the past i was able to enable the "constant" option for peopel in a channel but now i dont seem to be able to do it no more.

i understand the point made about the background noise too as i used to use mic and speekers but due to the back noise i now use headphones but even under the PTT option if two people hit the key at the same time you'll still get the echo.

Could this possible be revised to alow by channel name an option for the channel admin to set if he wants a PTT or continus voice in there channel.

I have reconsidered this and AOSpeak will no longer enforce Push To Talk for users that are Currently registered with the Speak bot.Any users with the question mark icon, the "Please Register" group will need to register with the speak bot to enable this feature.